Talk:History of Sheffield

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To-do list for History of Sheffield: edit · history · watch · refresh

Possible further topics to cover:

  • Industrial section should mention mining
  • the city's physical expansion - the laying out of new estates and construction of major buildings;
  • the city's political development;
  • the development of transportation in the city;
  • the development of major institutions, such as the universities;
  • the city's sporting heritage; in particular its important role in the nineteenth century development of football;
  • more briefly, the development of media and entertainment in the city
  • also briefly, immigration to the city
  • also briefly, religion in the city and the prominent role of dissent

Contents

[edit] Coat of Arms

In "industry" we describe the City Coat of Arms. It is proberbly worth placing an image of the arms on the page, as I understand the copyright laws this would be fair use, but do coats of arms have different rules? Andreww 03:13, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

  • At the bottom of that page it states that "The Coat of Arms should NOT be used without the Council's permission". I believe that they are quite defensive about other people using the Coat of Arms. Under US copyright law (which, I believe, governs wikipedia as the servers are in Florida) we could use the image under fair use, however, wikipedia now discourages uploading of images under fair use (you have to digitally sign a statement that you have the copyright holders permission to use the image). All fair use images may even be deleted from at some point in the future. There is an email address on the webpage for getting permission for use of the image, it may be worth sending them an email explaining what wikipedia is and asking to use the image—the worst that they can do is say no. JeremyA 03:30, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of Sheffield

I have made some changes to this article with respect to the naming of Sheffield as follows. Previously the article stated "The Saxons founded a settlement beside the River Sheaf sometime between 410 and 866, which was called Scafield or Escafeld", I have changed this to "The Saxons founded the settlement that was to become Sheffield in a clearing beside the confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don sometime between 410 and 866" to reflect the fact that we really have no idea what the early settlers called their settlement—The earliest mention of Sheffield that I know of is the Domesday book. I have also changed the translation of the text from the Domesday book from "In Ateclive and Escafeld [Attercliffe and Sheffield], two manors" to "In Attercliffe and Sheffield, two manors"—the rest of the translation is in modern English spellings and so the names Attercliffe and Sheffield should also be in their modern spellings. There is a common misconception that the name of the town used to be Escafeld (pronounced as written), the Domesday book however uses two variants for the spelling of Sheffield, Escafeld and Scafeld, which likely the result of Norman (French speaking) scribes trying to write the Saxon name (which may have been something like IPA: ʃefeɫd) phonetically. JeremyA 23:41, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Population graph

I have added a graph showing the population of Sheffield from 1700 to 2001. I'm in 2 minds as to whether it is a useful addition to this page. Comments would be welcome. JeremyA 04:50, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Coat of Arms--copyvio?

I have removed the text relating to the coat of arms of Sheffield as it appears to be mostly a copy-paste from the city council website. The removed text is as follows:

The Sheffield Coat of Arms, as shown on the Sheffield City Council website [1] were granted to the Sheffield Borough Council on 16th July 1875, and subsequently to the present City Council on 1st September 1977.
The lion on the crest is taken from the Arms of the Dukes of Norfolk, lords of the manor of Sheffield; it appeared also in the Arms of the Talbot family, their predecessors in the lordship.
The sheaf of arrows was the main motif in the seals of the Burgery of Sheffield and the Twelve Capital Burgesses, the two bodies which bore the brunt of local government in Sheffield before the town's incorporation as a Borough in 1843.
The three wheatsheaves on a green field were probably chosen at the College of Arms as a play upon the name Sheffield.
The two supporters, Vulcan and Thor, were chosen for their aptness to represent a place whose prosperity was almost entirely founded on the working of metal. Thor on the left, the smith of the Scandinavian gods has his hand resting on a hammer, and Vulcan on the right, the smith of the Roman gods, is standing in front of an anvil and is holding a pair of pincers.
The motto Deo Adjuvante Labor Proficit may be roughly translated as "With God's help our labour is successful".

If no-one gets to doing it first I will rewrite this section at some point. JeremyA (talk) 04:55, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fort(s)?

From the text:

This tribe constructed a fort in the 1st century AD at Wincobank, in what is now northeastern Sheffield

I think this is a confusion of two forts. David Hey's book "A history of Sheffield " says, if I can trust my memory, that the celtic hill fort was built 500 BC or something like that and that the romans built a fort opposite to the hill fort when they reached Sheffield (1st century AD). Gunnar Larsson 17:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that any date for the construction of Wincobank is probably mostly speculation. J Edward Vickers (1999) avoids dating it but states that Wincobank was probably the place that the Brigantes tried to fend off the Roman advance into their territory. Hunter (1819) actually attributed the building of Wincobank to the Romans. However, most sources seem to agree that it is Iron Age (~400BC - ~55AD) in origin. To reflect this uncertainty I have therefore altered the text so that it now states that it is an Iron Age fort, but does not date it. JeremyA 05:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bytham River

I have pulled out the following text:

The Bytham River is now considered to have been the route taken by the first humans to colonise Britain, around or before 500,000 years ago, when southern and eastern Britain was linked to continental Europe by a wide land bridge. Though many traces of the major river valley associated with the Bytham are thought to have vanished during the Anglian Ice Age it originally stretched from the area near Birmingham and drained the Midlands in the Early-Middle Pleistocene period. The Bytham flowed eastwards from the West Midlands and Southern Pennines and it's valley is probably the route which brought the first humans to the Pennines, Creswell Crags and what later became the Sheffield region.

To me, the link of this river to early human occupation in the Sheffield area seems to be very tenuous and mostly speculative. JeremyA 20:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Advice of link change

In References and Notes (no. 4) for this article, the page link for 'transcription' (referring to Leader's lecture of 1906) has changed. The transcript can now be found at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mossvalley/mv2/rl/highways1.html.

[edit] Failed GA Review

This article has been reviewed in line with the good article criteria. It has failed mainly because of a severe lack of references. Basically, an article of 3500 words needs more than eight footnotes.

'Well written: Pass. This article reads well. The use of the archaic grapheme æ is irritating in the medieval section, and in my opinion should be changed to standard modern English.

Factually accurate and verifiable: Fail. This article needs a lot of work to reference assertions and make it read less like a work of original resarch.

NPOV: Pass, although words such as "unfortunately" which occassionally creep in should be purged.

Bredth: Pass. The article covers everything I would expect it to.

Stable: Pass

Pictures: Pass, although the Bayeux Tapestry picture is bizarre in this context and should be removed.

Other than the referencing issue, these are minor problems, and the article can probably be expected to pass when they have been sorted out. I am not using 7 day hold in this case because I think the referencing will take a little longer than that to deal with totally. Thank you all for your work so far, and keep it up! Chrisfow 00:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Per second nomination, this is certainly a good candidate. I would like to see the citations adhere to WP:CITE#Footnotes come after punctuation, but that should not be a big hurdle. Unless someone comes in to present a different view in the meantime, please leave a message on my talk page when this has been completed, and I will pass the article. Dekimasu 09:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Passed GA review. As a final request, it would be nice if you could move "England" higher in the introduction, perhaps even starting with "The history of Sheffield, England" for the benefit of readers who lack the proper background. Dekimasu 19:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding a film?

The Full Monty, filmed in this town, is a good way to explain the crisis (economical and social) of 1980s and 1990s. It can be cited when the article speaks about the srike.--Ángel Luis Alfaro 19:54, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Change in Importance on Wikiproject:History

I have taken the liberty of lowering the Importance rating for this article on Wikiproject History, given that it is too specific and limited in scope to merit the previous, higher rating. Nautical Mongoose (talk) 13:21, 24 May 2008 (UTC)